GCSE Science Revision Mats: A Love / Hate Relationship

Becky Driver explains the complicated feelings she has for the science revision tool.

Test tubes

Well, what can I say about these resources?

I have developed a kind of love hate relationship with this revision material. Why? you may ask.

Why the hate?

Angry man

When I started at Twinkl, nearly two years ago, I was given the task of producing a set of GCSE revision mats.

The very detailed brief was, make some revision mats!

An easy task you may think?

Think again.

I started to plan how they would be set up: higher, foundation, separate, combined, biology, chemistry, physics, AQA, Edexcel and OCR… so many combinations. I had to start somewhere, so made the first few revision mats for AQA Chemistry, which took me around six hours at least per mat. So many hours working on them.Β  I must have made so many revision mats I lost count and started have fever dreams about them!

So why the love?

Love hearts

I knew the value of what I was doing. Having been a science teacher for ten years, I was convinced that they would be something I would use in my own GCSE science teaching. The key thing in my mind was to keep the amount of sheets to a minimum (like many teachers I had a monthly photocopy limit). So trying to fit as much as I could onto a page whilst still covering the GCSE curriculum was a bit of a challenge.

My aim was to make them specific to each exam board, as well as differentiated, then I knew they would be a very useful tool within the classroom. They then went on the Twinkl website around exam time, and wow, they took off! I couldn’t quite believe that the first set of resources I had made had become so popular. Then the customer requests for more came in thick and fast; we responded immediately, putting our efforts into making more.

The final goal? To finish them all.

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t4-sc-1004-aqa-biology-combined-science-higher-revision-mat-bundle

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t4-sc-1002-aqa-chemistry-combined-science-foundation-revision-mat-activity-pack

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/t4-sc-637-aqa-physics-gcse-unit-44-atomic-structure-foundation-revision-activity-mat

Leave a Reply